April 16, 2008...3:35 pm
Treason
Some of my research has been into the correspondence of Archibald MacLeish, the poet, playwright and a B-list member of the Lost Generation. During World War II, MacLeish served as Librarian of Congress and wrote propaganda. Around this time, Ezra Pound was seized by Allied forces during the invasion of Italy and accused of treason for his broadcasts for fascist radio. Prominent literary figures often wrote to MacLeish for information about this issue, probably because he was one of the only people in government that literary people knew.
Anyway, I pulled this out of a letter to “Pappy” Hemingway, dated July 7th, 1943:
“Poor old Ezra! Treason is a little too serious and a little to dignified a crime for someone who has made such an incredible ass of himself, and accomplished so little in the process.”
1 Comment
June 24, 2008 at 7:33 pm
http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2008/06/09/080609crbo_books_menand
I thought this was a very good recent read on the reprobate, exemplary, and compendiary Ezra Pound (written with typical verve and clarity by Louis Menand). What’s more, my chosen pull-quote seems more than a little apropos of the DaD’s preoccupation:
“It took you ninety-seven words to do it,” Pound is reported to have remarked to a young literary aspirant who had handed him a new poem. “I find it could have been managed in fifty-six.” He claimed that his best-known short poem, “In a Station of the Metro,” took a year and a half to write, and that he had cut it down from thirty lines:
The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.
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